5th Heart Surgery III

Tonight as I reflect on the surgery, there are several things that have been embedded in my memory. When I first woke, it took several attempts to rid my eyes of the grogginess from an entire day of sleeping. The surgery was Wednesday and lasted seven hours, the majority of the surgery used to scrape away scar tissue from the previous repairs in younger years.

Put in place of the old valve that had been inserted at age four was a new porcine valve. All in all, the surgery went beautifully, even with the several hours of scar tissue removal.

When I awoke to family on Thursday, my upper body felt as though it had been beaten with a sledgehammer. I had never quite experienced that kind of pain. The medications numbed the pain enough to where it could be tolerated, but when there was a lapse it was all I could do to wait for the next dose.

When they took out the breathing tube, my throat had incredible pain and hoarseness. This didn't alarm the nurses when mom asked about my inability to speak.
"Sometimes that happens after a surgery. The throat is just sore from the tube."
It felt as though I was in the hospital forever, but only because it was so difficult to move even an inch. There was no strength to sit on my own or lie down in my bed. Baby steps down the halls were slow and with a nurse or family member to lean on. Fifteen feet and then we would turn around and head back to the room calling it a success.
A technician would come in for what I called my regular beating. They rolled me to my side, I gripped the railing of the hospital bed as best as I could, and the tech would beat my back (this is all I recall) to loosen anything in the lungs, to prevent pneumonia. Because breathing was incredibly difficult after open heart surgery, this treatment helped prevent the complication of pneumonia.

To help get breathing back, it was required to do daily breathing exercises with a treatment machine. I would blow air into the mouth nozzle and try to get the little lever inside to rise up. Lines at different heights marked the progress. I couldn't believe how difficult it was to breathe after the surgery.

There were tubes everywhere. In the side of my chest, in the middle of my chest. I was constantly hooked to an EKG, wore an oxygen mask, and pulse reader. Just getting up to go use the restroom or make the daily walk down the hall was a fifteen minute ordeal to untangle and unhook cords and rehook them to a moveable stand. The tubes in the center of my chest were inserted through teeny, tiny incisions. I still remember the feeling when the nurse said it was time to remove them. The sickly feeling of the chords moving through the chest, rubbing against the open incision, still gives me chills thinking back. Gratefully, the NG tube was removed prior to waking up (THAT is an insane feeling having a tube pulled out from the abdomen, through the esophagus and out the nose. *shudder*)

There were a few times that I had nightmares, dreaming of being a helpless body in a hospital bed, unable to move while being attacked. I would wake sweating profusely and in immense pain. Nights in the hospital were long and hard, and sleep never came easily, and just when I would finally drift off it came time for vitals. I just wanted to be home.

I had many visitors. Most of the time they were a welcome surprise, but there were times that I was so incredibly exhausted that I felt guilty wanting to sleep while they were there to keep me company. Even sleeping, it helped knowing someone I loved was watching over me.

After a few days, my voice was still not sounding well at all, in fact, it was now a concern with the nurses, though they still promised that it may just take a week or two to get back to normal.
Supposedly while under sedation post surgery, I began to thrash around, yanking at the breathing tube. The doctor advised that this rough jerking of the breathing tube was a good possibility for the cause of the difficult speaking. Only time would tell.